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Wednesday, August 9, 2017

I hadn't even put my soapbox away from the other day and now I find
another use for it.. It's too tempting to climb onto it and make one more
pronouncement.

The most frequent question asked about Healthcare today (and by
"Healthcare" I mean access to and insurance for) is whether it is a right
or a privilege. Without staking out either side of the
proverbial aisle or commenting (for now) on the means of providing healthcare,
I will state that this debate misses another definition, probably the
most important one.

There is no question that Healthcare is a responsibility.

From a societal standpoint, it is not a matter of whether we can afford
to pay for access to proper medical care, including both preventive and
responsive treatment. It is whether we can afford not to.

Uninsured medical care is a huge burden on the financial well-being of this
country. The mere fact that you don't have insurance does not protect you from
medical calamities. Accidents and illness must be treated whether they can be
paid for or not. Our society in its civilized state has quite rightly accepted
this as fact. But even if you believe insurance is "fake money" the
resources used to care for the sick and the injured are very real. Real
instrumentation, real medicines, real space and real manpower are utilized. The
money to pay comes out of taxes, charity funds and federal grants-in-aid. In
other words everybody pays when patients are uninsured.

Beyond the financial issues though are the rather terrifying public health
ones. There are few areas of the country where people can truly retire from the
world. Some folks may have cabins in the woods or yurts in the dessert. But the
vast majority of Americans, even in rural parts, live in defined
municipalities. Most have some shared water source, shared public space
(schools, church, stores) and some need to interact on a regular basis with
other citizens.

Can you imagine a country where medical care is unavailable or ignored? A
country where infectious disease is untreated despite continued social
interaction? Where the contamination from illness is left uncleaned and
unmanaged? You don't need to have too vivid an imagination to see the results.
It has happened in this country. Google the Spanish Influenza of 1919 or the
Polio Epidemics of the '30s and '40s. Imagine what SARS might have been or
Ebola without proper healthcare and containment.

These are horror stories but not scare tactics, unless you are one of the
growing number of young and healthy folks that is convinced that they
will remain healthy and immune forever. Only if you can promise that you will
never get meningitis or hepatitis, never fall and have a head injury, never be
struck by a car or a falling object, then you need not buy into the societal
protection that is insurance. But only in those remote shacks or distant huts
can you assure that you will never burden a community with the detritus of your
health issues. Even then, the mountain, forest and desert are interconnected ecosystems.
They can be poisoned by death and disease as surely as a village, town or a
city.

Not having insurance when you can is a personal choice but a uniquely
selfish one. Not providing the means of access to healthcare to large portions
of the population is a cruel and dangerous mistake.

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